Small-Town Mom (2 page)

Jamie glanced at Eli to see if Myles’s explanation had had any effect on Eli’s reaction to Becca throwing out her preliminary test rather than shredding it. The set of his jaw said no.

Her stomach roiled. Jamie felt a kinship with Becca. The woman needed her job. She was a single mother, too. Becca’s husband had abandoned her when he’d accepted a promotion and job transfer to his company’s home office in Hartford and had taken his secretary—not Becca and their son—with him. Jamie hated that her son’s stupid act might jeopardize his teacher’s job.

“I took the test and looked up the answers myself and sold them,” Myles finished, as if his providing the answers somehow made it right.

At one time Jamie thought her raising Myles and his sisters in a Christian home had provided a better influence on them. John’s death in Afghanistan had corrected that misconception. God wasn’t there for her or her family.

“What do you think the consequence of your action should be?” Eli asked.

“A week’s suspension?” Myles voice rose at the end of the last word.

Eli nodded. “Sounds fair.”

Jamie’s temperature ticked up. He was going to punish Myles by letting him stay home for a week? “I don’t think…” A spark in Eli’s steel-blue eyes and twitch of his mouth cooled her temper, if not her temperature.

“In-school suspension. Here in the guidance office, with me.” Eli focused on Myles. “You’ll do all of your class work and write Mrs. Norton a letter of apology. I’m certain she put a lot of work into developing that test, and she’ll need to create a replacement one.”

“I guess. Can we go now?”

“Yes. Report to me when you get off the bus on Monday.”

“Thank you,” Jamie said.

“Doing my job.”

Jamie knew better. Babysitting her wayward child was going above and beyond a guidance counselor’s duties. For a fleeting moment, she let herself imagine what it would be like to have a commanding man like Eli Payton in Myles’s life. In
her
life.

“Feel free to call me any time you want to check up on Myles. I saw from the notes in Myles’s file that you worked closely with my predecessor, Erin Ryder.”

“Sure. Thanks again.” Jamie pulled her coat from the back of the chair. She had an unsettling feeling that working closely with Eli Payton would have a completely different dimension from working with Erin.

* * *

Eli tapped the spine of the file folder against the palm of his hand. Myles Glasser and his mother were another example of what an absent father did to a family. Not that he was faulting Myles’s father for serving his country and making the supreme sacrifice. But too often, he’d seen what consecutive deployments did to families, to some of his closest friends’ families. What Eli’s father’s job as a long-haul trucker had done to his mother and him and his sister. He opened his file cabinet and shoved the folder in.

Seeing how hard it was for some service families, and the memories of his father’s frequent absences from their Paradox Lake home, had convinced Eli to put off starting a family until he’d left. One of many things he and his ex-fiancee had disagreed about.

Family was important. More people needed to make it a priority. He’d meant what he said to Mrs. Glasser about working with her to get Myles on the straight and narrow. It certainly would be no hardship for him. Myles reminded him of himself at that age, before he’d gotten into more serious trouble. And Myles’s mother was pretty in a fresh girl-next-door way. He appreciated that she wasn’t model-slim like so many women aspired to be, and liked the way her curly dark hair framed her heart-shaped face. A face that had run the gamut of emotions from annoyance when she’d first entered his office to exasperation when her son explained his transgression to anger when she’d thought he was going to let Myles off with a suspension.

Eli pushed the cabinet door closed. Myles seemed like a good kid who needed a little guidance. The youth group he and Drew Stacey led at Hazardtown Community Church could give him some direction. Eli searched his memory. Had he seen Jamie and her family at church? No, he would have remembered her. Didn’t matter. Several of the youth group’s members didn’t belong to Community. He’d touch base with Jamie after Myles’s suspension was over and mention the group to her.

Eli lifted his jacket from the coat tree by the door and switched off the lights. Maybe if someone had given his mother a hand, helped her organize her own and their family life… His thought trailed off unfinished. He could do that for Jamie and Myles. Eli smiled as he pictured the way Jamie had bit her bottom lip when she’d thought he was going to let Myles get off with a week out of school. Yes, he could give her a hand and enjoy every minute of it.

* * *

“Uh, Mom. Aren’t you forgetting something?” Myles asked as Jamie flicked the signal to turn onto their road.

“What?”

“Rose and Opal.”

Jamie lifted her foot from the brake and straightened the wheel. “Oh, yeah.” She’d forgotten about the girls being at Emily’s.

“You’re not all upset about this, are you? It’s no big deal, or else Payton would have done more than suspend me for a week.”

“That’s Mr. Payton,” she corrected him. “And you stole the exam and helped other kids cheat—for money. That is a big deal. You know better. Whatever prompted you to do it?”

He rolled his eyes. “The money.”

The force of his words sent a chill through her. She gave Myles a reasonable allowance for helping around the house and yard, and he’d been shoveling snow for several of their neighbors.

“What do you need more money for?”

“You don’t want to know.”

He was right. Part of her didn’t want to know, but she should. She swallowed. “Yes, I do. Talk to me about it.”

“Dad’s Miata. I’m trying to buy it back from the Hills. We were going to restore it. Then you had to go and sell it.”

“I had to.” John’s military pension wasn’t enough for them to live on, and finances had been tight before she’d left the school to work at the birthing center. She’d fallen behind on the rent-to-buy lease payments on their house and hadn’t wanted to upset their family life more by having to move.

“Right. But your new job pays more. So why don’t you buy it back?” he challenged her.

Because seeing the car in the garage every day was too painful. And she’d been so mad at John for dying. Selling the car he’d taken such pride in had been cathartic. She couldn’t tell Myles that, though.

“There are other things we need more.”

Myles clenched his fists. “You have other things you want more. You don’t care what I need. Like you didn’t need Dad around.” His words jumbled together. “But I did. You didn’t want him around, so you could be boss of us.”

His words sliced into her heart. Her son had no idea how much she’d missed John when he’d been deployed, and how hard it was for her to be the only parent to Myles and the girls.

She gripped the steering wheel and cut a too-sharp turn onto Hazard Cove Road. “Myles! You and I talked about this before. I’m sorry you feel that way, but I always wanted your dad around.”
More than you’ll ever know.

She pulled into the driveway of the camp lodge where Emily and her husband lived.

“I am not buying you the Miata.” She took a deep breath. “But I won’t stop you from buying it as long as you earn the money legally.”

He pushed his bottom lip out in a petulant expression at odds with his man-boy face. When had he gotten so old? It seemed she and John had married only a couple of years ago, not more than fifteen.

“Why should I bother without Dad here to help me restore it?” He sniffled and then glared at her as if to rebuff any sympathy she might show him.

The virtual knife he’d plunged into her heart a moment ago sliced the rest of the way through. Myles threw his door open. She’d get through this as she’d gotten through everything else. By herself. Eli Payton’s offer to call him anytime she wanted echoed in her head. Jamie mentally shook off his invitation and the engaging smile he’d given her delivering it. They were only words, like John’s last words to her that he’d be home at the end of that month. She closed her eyes against the pain. She’d learned a hard lesson not to take anyone’s word at face value.

Chapter Two

J
amie pushed the shopping cart across the Grand Union parking lot and clicked the key remote to open the back door of her crossover. One good thing about her sometimes-erratic hours at the birthing center was that she often had time during the day for errands, like grocery shopping, which left her evenings free to be with the kids.

“Hey, Jamie.”

Jamie glanced over her shoulder. Clare Thomas waved from across the parking lot, and as Clare walked toward her, Jamie recognized the woman with her. Becca Norton, Myles’s history teacher and Clare’s sister-in-law. Shouldn’t she be at school? Jamie’s mouth went dry, and she let the grocery bag she was holding drop to the cargo-area floor. She hoped Becca hadn’t been suspended from her position because of Myles.

“Hi,” she managed to say as the two women stopped beside her shopping cart.

“We won’t keep you,” Clare said.

Famous last words.

“I just wanted to tell you how glad I was when Myles said that you’d given him permission to go to youth group with Tanner on Sunday.”

Jamie lifted another bag from the cart to hide her anger. She hadn’t done any such thing, and Myles shouldn’t have lied and said she had.

When she’d been called into work Sunday afternoon for a delivery, Jamie had asked Clare if Myles could come over and hang out with Tanner. The girls had been at a friend’s house and Jamie wasn’t sure she trusted Myles not to break his grounding if she or his sisters weren’t there. And he’d managed to do it anyway. He’d known she wouldn’t want him to go to youth group. When she’d stopped taking him and the girls to church and Sunday school, she’d made it very clear to Myles that neither church nor God had anything to offer any of them.

“Does that mean we’ll be seeing you back at church?” Clare asked.

Jamie mumbled a noncommittal reply. No need to make Clare the object of her anger. She’d reserve that for Myles.

“I hope you didn’t mind that Eli drove Myles home. He’s renting a place at the lake and had to go right by your house.”

Eli. So
he
was behind this. When she’d texted Clare on Sunday that she was leaving the birthing center and would swing by and pick up Myles, Clare had texted back that she had to go out anyway and would drop Myles off. And he certainly hadn’t said anything about Eli bringing him home. Jamie counted to five. She’d deal with Eli later.

“No, that was fine.” She’d never told Clare that Myles
couldn’t
go to youth group.

Jamie turned to Becca. “I hope Myles’s antics didn’t get you in trouble with the school.”

“No, the principal was decent.” Becca hesitated. “I think she feels sorry for me.” The woman grimaced.

“I’m glad I ran into you so I could apologize for Myles. Let me know if he gives you any more trouble.”

“I will.”

Clare looked at her sister-in-law and grinned. “You’ll be seeing a lot of more of Becca over the next few months.”

“I hope not.” Jamie slapped her hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds. I’m coming down hard on Myles about his behavior. So, I hope I won’t be putting in as much time at the guidance office this year.” A point she was going to make clear to Mr. Payton.

“No!” Clare laughed. “Not at the school. You’ll be seeing Becca at the center. She’s expecting.”

Becca shot her sister-in-law a quelling look. It was clear to Jamie that she hadn’t been ready to share that news.

“Congratulations.” Jamie’s heart went out to Becca and her situation. Jamie had gone through her pregnancies with the girls alone. But at least she’d had the expectation that her husband was coming home, had been able to talk and email with him. Becca didn’t even have that. Her husband had abandoned her and their young son and, now, the new baby.

“I’m available to talk if you want. One thing I have a lot of practice doing is being a single parent.”

“Thanks,” Becca said. “I might take you up on that.”

“We’d better let you go,” Clare said. “Think about coming back to church. We miss you and the kids.”

Jamie pasted a smile on her face and waved goodbye. No sense in causing hard feelings by telling Clare she had no desire to rejoin the Community Church fellowship or any church fellowship. It was a waste of time. She’d learned the hard way that the only person or thing she could depend on was herself. Jamie slammed the back door of the vehicle shut and climbed in the driver’s seat to head to her next, unplanned stop—the school. More specifically, Eli Payton’s office.

* * *

Eli hadn’t been able to get Jamie Glasser off his mind all week, and the daily one-on-one with Myles hadn’t helped. He glanced at the teen, his dark head bent over the history book he was reading. While Eli was sure Myles wouldn’t appreciate the observation, he looked a lot like his mother. Granted, a masculine version of his mother.

“All done.” Myles slammed the book shut and started drumming his fingers on the student desk Eli had asked maintenance to move into his office Monday morning. The teen’s dark-lashed eyes—his mother’s eyes—fixed on the clock slowly ticking away the hour remaining in the school day.

“Stop.” Eli shot Myles The Look, the one he had honed training airmen at Maxwell Air Force Base.

The teen’s fingers stilled.

“Good. I won’t have to make you drop and give me twenty.”

“You can’t do that.” Myles’s voice wasn’t anywhere near as strong as his words.

“Try me.” The teen was right. In the months since he’d returned to Paradox Lake, Eli had found—often, the hard way—that the mindset and actions that had served him well in the Air Force didn’t translate well to civilian life. But he wasn’t alone. Some of the guys in the Air National Guard unit he’d recently joined had said they’d had the same problem after leaving active duty.

The guidance office door swung open, giving Myles a reprieve and excuse to turn away.